WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 1 00:00:00.003 --> 00:00:04.863 - 35,000 tourists a year visit the Berkeley Pit. 2 00:00:04.863 --> 00:00:07.193 A century ago this was called the Richest Hill on Earth. 3 00:00:07.193 --> 00:00:10.153 It was the Anaconda Copper Mine in Butte, Montana. 4 00:00:10.153 --> 00:00:12.503 It's not rich anymore, and it's not much of a hill. 5 00:00:12.503 --> 00:00:15.393 In the 1950s, the mine changed from digging underground tunnels 6 00:00:15.393 --> 00:00:17.603 that followed particularly rich veins of copper, 7 00:00:17.603 --> 00:00:19.523 to just excavating everything, 8 00:00:19.523 --> 00:00:21.313 turning the hill into an open pit 9 00:00:21.313 --> 00:00:24.043 on a scale that is difficult to convey on camera. 10 00:00:24.043 --> 00:00:27.593 There were whole neighbourhoods destroyed to make way for this. 11 00:00:27.593 --> 00:00:30.273 It is a mile wide, and so deep that you could fit 12 00:00:30.273 --> 00:00:34.013 the new One World Trade Center standing upright in it. 13 00:00:34.013 --> 00:00:35.423 Or at least you could, 14 00:00:35.423 --> 00:00:39.103 if the pit wasn't halfway filled with toxic dilute acid. 15 00:00:39.103 --> 00:00:41.683 It kills any birds that land in there for too long. 16 00:00:41.683 --> 00:00:44.893 In 2016, thousands of geese died in one night 17 00:00:44.893 --> 00:00:47.293 after a snowstorm forced them down there. 18 00:00:47.293 --> 00:00:51.023 The team here let me get a little bit closer than the tourists do. 19 00:00:51.023 --> 00:00:52.953 - Some studies were done to try to figure out 20 00:00:52.953 --> 00:00:56.323 how long a bird can withstand sitting on the pit water 21 00:00:56.323 --> 00:00:59.273 and those studies found that it's up to 18 hours. 22 00:00:59.273 --> 00:01:01.123 Six to seven thousand birds come through 23 00:01:01.123 --> 00:01:04.913 and utilise the Berkeley Pit as a resting stop per year. 24 00:01:04.913 --> 00:01:07.203 We're on the overlap of two major flyways 25 00:01:07.203 --> 00:01:09.853 so it's to be expected. [deep boom] 26 00:01:09.853 --> 00:01:11.113 - Can you tell me what that was? 27 00:01:11.113 --> 00:01:14.533 - So that's a propane cannon, we have them on timers 28 00:01:14.533 --> 00:01:17.323 and they run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 29 00:01:17.323 --> 00:01:20.493 Hopefully, deter the birds from ever considering 30 00:01:20.493 --> 00:01:23.093 landing on the water of the Berkeley Pit to begin with. 31 00:01:23.093 --> 00:01:26.903 If the birds land, we have a crew of personnel 32 00:01:26.903 --> 00:01:29.663 that observes from this shack on the hour. 33 00:01:29.663 --> 00:01:32.503 They log them and then attempt to haze them off. 34 00:01:32.503 --> 00:01:37.543 The go-to is high-powered rifles, you have that ability to hit very close 35 00:01:37.543 --> 00:01:40.333 to the birds from a very far distance away. 36 00:01:40.333 --> 00:01:43.503 And it's not so much the boom as you would expect that scares them 37 00:01:43.503 --> 00:01:45.623 but it's the projectile hitting the water, 38 00:01:45.623 --> 00:01:49.873 creating a large splash, and that's what usually does it. 39 00:01:49.873 --> 00:01:53.263 And in the case that we know a large flock of birds is coming, 40 00:01:53.263 --> 00:01:55.503 we can have continual fireworks 41 00:01:55.503 --> 00:01:58.703 to deter the birds from entering the pit area. 42 00:01:58.703 --> 00:02:03.323 We get almost all of them, we are over 99% effective. 43 00:02:03.323 --> 00:02:05.763 - There's around 10,000 miles of mine shafts and tunnels 44 00:02:05.763 --> 00:02:07.053 under the city of Butte. 45 00:02:07.053 --> 00:02:09.803 That's not an exaggeration. 10,000 miles. 46 00:02:09.803 --> 00:02:12.543 Groundwater and rainwater had to be constantly pumped out. 47 00:02:12.543 --> 00:02:16.973 Nearby pumps moved somewhere around 300 litres a second. 48 00:02:16.973 --> 00:02:20.263 But when this pit shut down in 1982, so did the pumps, 49 00:02:20.263 --> 00:02:22.923 and water started to flood the old tunnels and the pit. 50 00:02:22.923 --> 00:02:25.003 The rock here is full of iron pyrite. 51 00:02:25.003 --> 00:02:29.083 Combine that with oxygen and water and as it rusts, you get sulfuric acid. 52 00:02:29.083 --> 00:02:32.373 That in turn, breaks down other metals and minerals in the rock. 53 00:02:32.373 --> 00:02:34.213 And the result is that the water down there 54 00:02:34.213 --> 00:02:37.133 is so acidic and so contaminated with toxins 55 00:02:37.133 --> 00:02:40.113 that nothing except a few hardy bugs can live in it. 56 00:02:40.113 --> 00:02:42.793 The deep groundwater here is utterly contaminated 57 00:02:42.793 --> 00:02:44.823 but it's a closed system. 58 00:02:44.823 --> 00:02:48.503 The sulfuric acid can't get in or out, for now, 59 00:02:48.503 --> 00:02:50.473 because there's one more catch. 60 00:02:50.473 --> 00:02:52.453 Water is still flowing into the pit 61 00:02:52.453 --> 00:02:54.153 and if it gets above a certain level, 62 00:02:54.153 --> 00:02:56.746 then the nasty stuff will start to leak out. 63 00:02:57.713 --> 00:03:01.543 - So down here we're at the Berkeley Pit pump station. 64 00:03:01.543 --> 00:03:06.333 Right now the Berkeley Pit is the sink or the sump, 65 00:03:06.333 --> 00:03:09.143 like a hydraulic control for the system. 66 00:03:09.143 --> 00:03:11.783 So what we're doing here is we're pumping, treating 67 00:03:11.783 --> 00:03:13.813 and discharging water from the system. 68 00:03:13.813 --> 00:03:17.883 And this includes bringing Berkeley Pit water on line 69 00:03:17.883 --> 00:03:21.513 and treating it through an existing water treatment plant. 70 00:03:21.513 --> 00:03:25.093 If the Berkeley Pit is not maintained, 71 00:03:25.093 --> 00:03:29.793 the protective water level would be reached in July of 2023. 72 00:03:30.843 --> 00:03:35.463 pH at one time was as low as about 2.2 or 2.3. 73 00:03:35.463 --> 00:03:37.823 Currently up to about 4.1. 74 00:03:37.823 --> 00:03:40.333 The water that we'll be discharging from the site 75 00:03:40.333 --> 00:03:43.413 will be clean water, about 7 million gallons per day. 76 00:03:43.413 --> 00:03:45.033 2100 gallons per minute. 77 00:03:45.033 --> 00:03:49.503 Since 1982, the water level has been increasing, 78 00:03:49.503 --> 00:03:52.133 in the neighborhood of about six to seven feet per year. 79 00:03:52.133 --> 00:03:56.163 Later this year would be the first time since 1982 80 00:03:56.163 --> 00:04:00.103 that the pit water level will be maintained and held steady. 81 00:04:00.103 --> 00:04:03.773 - Tourists go here because, well, tourists will go anywhere interesting 82 00:04:03.773 --> 00:04:05.523 and this is interesting. 83 00:04:05.523 --> 00:04:09.453 In 2007, Dr Phaedra Pezzullo of the University of Colorado, Boulder, 84 00:04:09.453 --> 00:04:11.873 coined the term 'toxic tourism'. 85 00:04:11.873 --> 00:04:14.423 The fact that people will come to gawp or be shocked 86 00:04:14.423 --> 00:04:17.643 or just to take a selfie, and say that they saw 87 00:04:17.643 --> 00:04:20.573 the mile-wide pool of toxic waste. 88 00:04:20.573 --> 00:04:22.673 And there are much worse ways to raise awareness 89 00:04:22.673 --> 00:04:25.403 and tell the world, hey, this is pretty screwed up 90 00:04:25.403 --> 00:04:27.043 and we need to do something about it. 91 00:04:27.043 --> 00:04:30.283 A $3 admission fee is, well, it's capitalism. 92 00:04:30.283 --> 00:04:35.073 In the United States, a country that codified the idea of the roadside attraction, 93 00:04:35.073 --> 00:04:37.283 it almost seems normal to pay for a ticket 94 00:04:37.283 --> 00:04:39.996 to see the mile-wide, incredibly toxic pit. 95 00:04:41.333 --> 00:04:42.993 Thanks to all the team from Montana Resources 96 00:04:42.993 --> 00:04:44.943 and the Berkeley Pit who helped make this video happen. 97 00:04:44.943 --> 00:04:47.613 You can find out more about them by pulling down the description.